Cisco, Motorola, Netgear Team Up To Expose Wifi Patent Bully
from the hitting-back-hard dept
Last year, we wrote about a crazy patent troll, named Innovatio, who had sued a ton of restaurants and hotels, claiming that anyone who used WiFi was violating its patents. It was even claiming that individuals who use WiFi at home infringed too -- but that it wouldn't go after them "at this time." Instead, it preferred to focus on shaking down tons of small businesses, offering to settle for $2,500 to $3,000 -- which is cheaper than hiring a lawyer to fight it, no matter how bogus. We noted at the time that Motorola and Cisco had gone to court to try to get a declaratory judgment to protect its customers.Well, it seems that the effort to stop these lawsuits has been taken to the next level. Cisco, Motorola and Netgear have now filed an amended complaint which rips Innovatio apart, and doesn't just seek a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, but outlines a parade of lawbreaking by Innovatio, arguing that it's actually involved in racketeering and conspiracy among other things. The full filing, embedded below, is fascinating. The filing reveals some background about Innovatio, which apparently is connected to Noel Whitley, who had been VP of Intellectual Property at Broadcom... but then left to create Innovatio, which just so happens to have acquired most of its patents from... Broadcom. Among the parade of insanity charged against Innovatio:
- Motorola, Cisco and Netgear all have licensed the patents in question, meaning that users of that equipment are covered by those patents under the concept of patent exhaustion (basically, if you buy a licensed product, it's licensed). Innovatio conveniently doesn't mention this to the people it sends threat letters to.
- The patents in question are part of commitments to IEEE that they'll only be licensed on RAND terms, but the threat letters demand way more than would be considered "reasonable."
- Incredibly, Innovatio includes some expired patents in the list of patents it has threatened people over. That's a massive no-no. Once a patent is expired you can't demand a license for it. At all.
- Innovatio apparently tells the people it threatens that it'll be cheaper to just settle, rather than to even investigate the claims that it's making -- and has told people that the manufacturers in question aren't defending their customers, which is proven false by the lawsuit, which, again, was filed soon after Innovatio popped up on the scene.
- In an attempt to appear more legit, Innovatio claims that the patents in question have "generated in excess of $1 billion in settlements and license fees" to scare small businesses into complying. It leaves out that it appears to be basing this number on the famous broad patent fight settlement between Qualcomm and Broadcom, which was a wide-ranging cross licensing program, that has nothing to do with Innovatio or its specific patents.
Defendants prey upon end users that are not involved in the development or supply of the accused technologies, demanding exorbitant licensing amounts that breach numerous obligations on the patents and greatly exceed any notion of reasonableness. In furtherance of their plan, Defendants threaten protracted negotiations with onerous burdens on end users, and offer supposed “discounts” for promptly paying Innovatio without engaging in such negotiations, while making it clear that Innovatio will initiate costly litigation with anyone that does not acquiesce (something it cannot realistically do given the 8000-plus letters sent throughout the U.S.). Under these circumstances, Innovatio circumvents its obligations and illegally obtains and seeks to obtain licensing fees to which it is not entitled, at great detriment to the Plaintiffs in this action, their customers, and the public generally.Oh yeah, as for that whole "expired patent" thing? That seems especially egregious:
To date, at least ten of the Innovatio Patents have expired, yet those patents continue to be highlighted in Defendants’ threat letters in furtherance of their licensing campaign. Yet Innovatio states to its licensing targets that “Innovatio proposes granting [the licensing target] an upfront, paid-up license for its use under all of 31 of the issued Innovatio Patents,” when those targets have no liability on and therefore no need of such a license to expired patents. For example, on May 9, 2012, almost one year after the ‘771 patent expired and almost six months after the ‘311 patent expired, Innovatio sent a demand letter to [redacted] .... Innovatio did not provide notice of these or its other patents to [redacted] before expiration. Notwithstanding the expiration of these patents and other patents, Innovatio’s May 9, 2012 demand letter stated “[t]he operation and use of any [WLANs that use the IEEE 802.11 communication protocols] by [redacted] constitutes infringement of at least the following Innovatio Patents: . . . U.S. Patent No. 5,940,771 . . . [and] U.S. Patent No. 6,374,311.” .... Yet circumstances here including a failure to comply with 35 U.S.C. §287, confirms that Innovatio cannot assert infringement or recover damages on at least these expired patent claims. On information and belief, Innovatio never disclosed that these patents had expired, or that its remedies were limited, and the purpose behind inclusion of these patents is to inflate the size of Innovatio’s portfolio, instill fear, increase fees and costs to investigate, and force its targets to capitulate promptly to Innovatio’s unlawful demands.The filing also includes standard claims of non-infringement and invalidity of the patents in question, but the highlighting of these other behaviors by Innovatio are really quite stunning. Even in cases of extreme patent trolling it's pretty rare to see such egregious behavior. Every so often we see RICO claims being used to counter trollish behavior, but they rarely work. However, the details in this case suggest that if a RICO charge is going to stick, this seems like a reasonable case for it to happen.
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Filed Under: patent trolls, patents, racketeering, rico, wifi
Companies: broadcom, cisco, innovatio, motorola, netgear
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Vampires
This is also a big reason why I think patents should not be transferable. Or at least, have a limited number of transfers available.
Another idea would be to require all companies that have used patent lawsuit threats to extort money from others should be forced to pay back 300% of the money they took (plus legal fees) if any of the patents used in the threat later turn out to be invalid or had expired by the time the extortion occurred.
There should be a lot of limitations put on patents.
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Re: Vampires
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Re: Vampires
Throw a bit of game theory into the equation and watch things change for the better.
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Re: Vampires
I have become convinced that abolishing Patent would be far more beneficial than the supposed "benefits" that are gained by having Patents in the first place.
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copybandits
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My thought
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Re: My thought
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Re: copybandits
Use it or lose it would really make it hard for small businesses to protect their patents. Since they do not have the economic moneybag to defend themself in court, it is advantageous for them to seek economic and judiciary help in a more specialized companies. By use it or lose it you need a way to mitigate the economic obstacles in taking a small case to court. The only way to make it in a way republicans can swallow is through a reform of how tort is calculated and especially who pays what and when.
You could argue for more government-interventionist actions, but that would not really be politically wieldy.
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Re: Re: copybandits
THIS!!!! 100000 times!
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Ahem, on a more serious note I hope this has massive impact on patent trolling. Hopefully to the point of extinguishing it.
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Yes, all those cookie-cutter mass-extortion campaigns that demand a few thousand to make it go away. From DirecTV to RIAA to porn peddlers, a figure proven to be the sweet-spot of monetary demands, where people are likely to pay up without a fight.
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Mike, why are you always siding against the little guy? Are these big corporations paying you off?? You don't want to protect the little guy from being bullied by these huge monsters? What about the little guy???
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Re:
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Oligarchy?
/sarc
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thats a lot of egregiosnessness ness?
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Re: thats a lot of egregiosnessness ness?
https://www.google.com/search?q=google&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#hl= en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=1&pq=google&cp=11&gs_id=1q&xhr=t&q=define+egregio us&pf=p&sclient=tablet-gws&client=safari&tbo=d&oq=define:+egr&gs_l=&pbx= 1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=bb695c63d480a1f1&bpcl=35243188&biw=1024&bih=644
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End User Protection
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Stupid patent troll - see email address
Feel free to send hate emails to him.
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Troll Accountability
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Re: Troll Accountability
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Snarf Dem Patents...
Anyone who so abuses held patents in such a manner shall immediately forfeit them forever.
End of problem.
Ya kin thank me later. =8*d
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class action correctness
Next up: Patents reform..... a few ideas:
a. Patents are not enforceable unless put into use directly by the inventor within five (5) years. Otherwise they are presumed to have been abandoned - just as with trademarks.
b. Patent rights permit exclusive use for 4 years. This exclusive period starts on the EARLIER of: (a) issuance of the patent or (b) 1 year following the initial filing of the patent application.
c. After the expiration of the 4th year, a compulsory license scheme is put into place (similar to copyright) with royalties to be set by agreement with either party able to seek arbitration. Once a license fee for a patent is set, the license fee may be reduced for future compulsory licenses but not increased.
d. Obviousness test to be truly applied. If the PTO does not have the expertise they need to hire it.
e. Presumption of validity is eliminated. Just because the PTO says something does not mean it is true.
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Ain't it grand?
If the patent is valid, these brilliant people deserve their fees by legal right!
And who is to say what a reasonable fee is? Seriously, this robery by statuate is as American as Baseball!
Many here are angry only because they weren't smart enough to get rich using similar ideas. I only wish I were!
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Turf War
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I dunno. Kind of looks like "Big Wifi" interfering with a perfectly good, litigation based business model!
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